1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a zinc oxide with acicular structure (zinc oxide acicular structure), a process for its production and a photoelectric conversion device.
2. Related Background Art
ZnO having attracted notice as a substance having various uses has been used in pigments, coating materials, printing inks, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, dental materials and so forth from old times. In recent years, it is used in a wide field including electrophotographic photosensitive agents, semiconductor lasers, UV-screening agents, photocatalysts, sensors, surface elastic-wave filters, camera exposure meters, photoelectric conversion devices and so forth, utilizing semiconductivity, photo-semiconductivity, piezoelectric properties, light-emitting properties and interfacial properties.
As commonly available means for producing zinc oxide films, the films can be produced by various processes such as sputtering, vacuum deposition, CVD (chemical vapor deposition) and electrodeposition. For example, Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 8-217443 and No. 8-260175 disclose that a process has been established by which zinc oxide can uniformly be produced in a filmy form on a large-area conductive substrate by electrodeposition.
However, with regard to the process of forming zinc oxide by electrodeposition as disclosed in the above Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 8-217443 and No. 8-260175, the zinc oxide can only be formed in the filmy form, and not in an acicular form.